DigiWorld
by rabowill
Summary: Irec has the power to summon subway trains.... but one day, he enters a different train, and with that, a different world... not a 'ninth digidestined' fic


A/N At END

It all began when Irec started to summon subway trains. He would be rushing to make it to school on time, hurriedly rush down narrow, grimy stairs at the 72nd street station on Broadway around 7:13 in the morning, and think, quite distractedly, about a train arriving. The muscles in his face were always quite tense, but he had learnt to control that when summoning subway trains. His entire face would be relaxed, or as relaxed as possible, except for a slight pressure behind both of his ears and a slight tensing of the lower jaw. A fixed stare at the exposed iron bars that held the station up, an imagining of the train arriving, and the train would simply begin to arrive at the station.

Imagining the train arriving was harder than it seemed - you had to take into account the sound of metallic water pouring through pipes that announced the arrival of a train, the brightening at the end of the tunnel, the exact wind speed, and the minds in the train. The latter was probably the hardest of all to do - but as soon as you began to think of a few minds, and you always did this at the end, the train would arrive, and the other minds would fill in themselves. Irec was aware of all this, yet he was also aware of the fact that he was on an extremely narrow platform, surrounded by people going to Houston St., Wall St., or Chambers St. 

But going back to 'it' - as 'it' started when Irec began to summon subway trains - 'it' was something far larger than Irec could possibly have imagined. If he knew about the size of 'it', then 'it' would have been smaller and less organized, in his eyes. But, as he did not know about 'it', 'it' was enormous. And this is the story of 'it'. 

Irec waited at 72nd St. station impatiently. He was running late (as well as the trains) for the third day in a row, and he was not happy. West Nile virus mosquito spraying had begun again, and because of it, he was unable to relax his face in the correct manner. He was still able to summon information about why the train was not coming. A static crackle and a few unintelligible words sputtered out of the loudspeaker before an uptown express train arrived on the other platform, making the rest of the announcement incoherent. 

Suddenly, as he began to get jostled, he reawoke to the world around him, and noticed that the platform was deserted. Well, not completely deserted, as there was the local beggar at the end of the platform, as well as the few with flushed and annoyed faces of people who had just arrived and missed the train as it was going out of the station. 

_Except, _thought Irec, _there was no train. Where DID everyone go? Argh, I need to get more information, AGAIN - _A sudden smooth sound interrupted his thoughts. It was a sound unknown to his New York subway-commuter ear; it was the sound of a different type of train arriving. Puzzled, Irec went to the edge of the platform and looked out - and jumped back into the center of the platform. The arriving train had no number or letter naming it; it was unmarked. Curiously, nobody else seemed to even notice its arrival and difference to the regular express trains - for one, it was nearly empty, it was completely painted in a lurid yellow, and the entire seat configuration was different. The only graffiti on it was scratched in an illegible script quite unlike the curves found in the English alphabet. On the side, however, it did say (in English) that it was going downtown, so Irec got on. And almost walked right off again, except that his backpack pressed against the closing doors, making a slight hissing sound as some air went out of it. 

The reason that he almost walked right out again was because there were several piles of pink cowpies scattered randomly around the floor of the train. Irec automatically began to readjust his foot position and grabbed onto a pole, as the train was moving, and had to be very picky about it - the cowpies seemed to multiply the more you looked at them!

As the train increased in speed, Irec moved to get a seat. Swinging his backpack around to put on his lap, he then studied the other passengers on the train. None of them were young enough to go to his school, but he noticed that they seemed to gradually fade. _Oookkkk! This is getting a little too weird, maybe I'll change cars_ Irec thought, but as he stood up to move, he felt something push back down at him. He could not see how he was being pushed back, but he had the general feeling of birds feet, rough hands with warts and calluses on them, and a few stabbing ant bites. Still resisting, he began to cry out for help from the other passengers, all of whom simply looked at him with a slightly amused expression on their faces. Irec began to feel something from the inside, a fear, as well as a push - a push as if somebody wanted him to physically change into something else._But that's silly_, he thought_. Who would want me to become something that I'm not? _Images of relatives, parents, pushing him to choose a well paying career floated into his mind. _No, not a career change. It's almost as if somebody is telling me to to grow a beaker of salt on the back of my hand! _

Terrified, now, Irec pushed out with all his might, which just made his invisible attackers resist even more strongly. "Let go!" he managed to say, but only in a tense, light, terrified, whisper. A few wisps of laughter floated into his ears. Hard laughter, laughter to make you feel foolish, but at the same time, laughter that encourages you to go on. And then warm sunlight broke through the windows of the train, and all of his senses vanished, except for a small voice in his head: Light?_ We're still underground?_ Blackness joined around the edges of his field of thought, and he faded away.

__

Upon awakening, he failed to recognize where he was, lying down on the subway train's seats. Sitting up, he realized that the train was stationary, at a station in the middle of the countryside, and more specifically, a station without a platform. The stench of the cowpies gave a slightly Swiss hint to the air. Nevertheless, the doors opened, and Irec tiptoed his way out, avoiding the cowpies, which had seemed to multiply while he was asleep. There was a small drop to the grass below - _No tracks_, Irec noted, with a hint of regret - about a foot drop, but Irec was alert enough to notice that. He walked out onto the green grassy field, and as he made his first step in the grass, he knew that the train behind him had vanished. 

__

How he knew that the train behind him had disappeared, Irec did not know how to describe. It was as if it simply ceased to exist. _Impossible the law of conservation states that no energy can be destroyed, or be created. Then how?! _Irec's thought paused in mid-step, his foot in the air, about to hit the field of grass. Abruptly swinging around, simply to make sure that the train had disappeared, he breathed a sigh of relief. It was gone. To be absolutely positive, he ran back the few steps he had made, the contents of his backpack swinging around, making it seem as if it had a life of its own. He could plainly see his own first deep impression (after all, it had been a foot drop) in the grass, but there were no signs of the train ever being there at all, and even the smell had disappeared. Nothing was there, except a feeling of a Gate.

Pausing, Irec smiled to himself. The feeling that he had of the Gate's presence was not uncommon; in fact, he had named that feeling a Gate himself. It was a feeling that something was supposed to emerge out of a border. Normally, it came around doorframes, or arches. The feeling was slightly out of place here, in the middle of nowhere. As far as Irec could see.

Grunting, Irec turned on his heel into the field again. The objects in his backpack made a small cluttered protest of noise at the sharp turn, bouncing off each other in its dark green canvas. Taking slightly broader steps in the direction he had originally taken, he walked. Sniffing the air around him as he went, he noticed that it smelt free. Freedom was one of the many joys of the world; there was sexual joy, birthday joy, presents joy, anticipation of gifts joy, freedom joy, about to rain joy, stormy weather joy, puzzle joy, music joy, art joy, sports joy, order joy, life joy, and many others. Each of these joys had their own unique smell, including music joy. Freedom joy, the smell present in the air around Irec, was a slightly seedy smell, but a smell unabashed. It also had movement; it whipped across your face and embraced you from behind, taking you to new heights. Besides movement, it also had temperature, which was always just a tiny bit cooler than you expected. It also focused on possession of the body, as all joys did - in this case, it focused on the nose and face, working its way down to Irec's hands and no further. Taking in deep breaths, Irec continued walking, eyes closed, trying to take in as much of the beautiful scent as possible.

He began to associate, in his head, other feelings, emotions, and smells went with freedom joy. Thoughts of slightly misty fields came to mind, slightly humid areas, where it was just about to rain, another joy. _Wait that just comes out of reading too many British fiction novels ah well, I really DO like it anyway _Irec's thoughts, like the smell around him, whipped around his face and then embraced him from behind, eventually slipping away. 

Eyes slightly closed, he kept on walking, trying to get the best of the wind that was being thrown into his face by rocking back and forth a little. After about twenty minutes of this, he began to reawaken to the world around him. And he was still in a world surrounded by grass fields. Trying to grasp what it was that had taken him out of his slightly dream state, Irec realized that he had sensed a Gate. Much like the one that he had come out of, this Gate also had no borders indicating size or shape. 

Irec had no idea how to use a Gate. He sensed them all the time, but the actual manipulation of them was beyond him. Pausing, muttering, he carefully poked at the Gate-space with his index finger. 

Nothing. 

Sticking his finger in his mouth for good measure, very scared, as he had sighted no living organism aside from himself and the grass, he tentatively put it out again. Without warning, the Gate-space grabbed it and created a wall of spit that reached up into the slightly cloudy sky, about two feet wide and less than an inch thick. Quickly (and unsuccessfully) trying to pull his finger out, Irec simply had to let his finger be engulfed by the slimy and cold spit as it oozed down the sky into the ground, forming a pool. As he stood there, waiting for all the spit to ooze down this wall (completely vertical, with no support), he looked around - and gaped, as other, similar walls that were sliding down into pools appeared in what looked to be a random distribution around the fields. Other than spit, he also saw fire, mist, organisms of every type known to him (including plants, fungi, humans, bacteria, dogs, cats, rats, turtles, spiders, and many more), steel scaffolding, water, and molten stone. Oddly enough, no smell was emitted from any of the walls, and the wind still flew, unabashed. But the cold texture of spit still rolled onto and past Irec's index finger. 

After about five full minutes of standing still, waiting for his finger to be released by the wall of spit, Irec found that he could move his finger out of the Gate-space. His finger had pins and needles after having stayed in one place without motion for so long; movement of the finger resulted in pain, but if he did not move it, more pain would come. Looking back up at the wall of spit, he realized that it had shrunk in height, and was only about five yards high now. The ever-growing pool that now glistened around Irec's sneakers had grown considerably in the last five minutes. Hastily jumping out of the way, Irec looked at the other pools. All of them were exactly the same height. And even though they had appeared to be randomly scattered across the field, their pools of varying size managed to create straight, little, grid-like paths around the landscape, similar to rice paddies, as far as Irec could see. 

Taking in even more of the wide, bizarre landscape that he was surrounded by, Irec noticed that faint, different, smells were coming from the pools - city smells, unclean smells, smells of love, smells of hate, smells of joy, smells of smog, smells of the rainforest. Startled by these new arrivals, he stepped backwards - into a pool of fire.

Of course, he did not realize where he was until he saw flames in front of his hands. Irec, puzzled by the absence of heat and texture - what had been present in the walls - but the presence of a different, metallic smell. It was the smell of a glossy new magazine, the smell that always gave Irec a headache, but in smaller amounts, craved more of. As the smell was in large quantities, Irec felt extremely nauseated. Stepping out of the pool of fire, he shook himself off, as well as his backpack, giving it few quick brushes on the outside. Nothing had burnt. 

Strolling down one of the paths, carefully eyeing and avoiding the pools of fire (all of the walls had completely melted into pools by now), he settled to go into a pool of water, to take a quick bath. He had showered earlier on in the day, but he had been though far more this morning than he had any other, and fatigue had settled in. It was only ten o' clock, according to his Casio digital watch. Stripping down to his underwear, he meandered, walking, into the pool, his feet making small ripples that produced interference patterns. Like the pool of fire, it had no real temperature or texture, and the smell of a subway station rose from it. Touching the water that he could not feel, but only see, and splashing it on his legs, he noticed a small movement in his reflection not caused by him. Looking behind him, he saw nothing, and overhead, nothing moved. Shrugging, he took some more water and splashed it onto his other leg. Again, a movement not made by him was shown in the water. 

Sighing, he sat down on the edge of the pool and splashed his feet around. Ripples and his reflection were shown. And again, that movement which widened into a picture of a moving red express number 2 train arriving at Penn Station. Shocked, Irec stood up in the water again, feeling the bottom of the pool. It felt of still grass - although the water had no texture, it did block the wind blowing on top. The wind had no ripple effect of the water, an eerie sensation - you could feel the difference on your leg, but the mild breeze created no interference pattern. Looking through the surface of the water, in much the same way that you looked through those three-dimensional 'magic eyes', Irec looked again, and saw the inside of an Express number 2 train, with Penn Station's platform outside the window. Staring through what he was already staring through, Irec began to feel slightly dizzy, as he always did whenever he looked at those 'magic eyes' too long, overanalyzing things. And slowly, the moving picture began to look more and more three-dimensional - Irec could even see some of the poles and handles begin to stick out of the pool. The people in the train glanced up a little, some even at Irec's underwear, some at his face, all quickly, and all shook their heads after looking. 

Frightened - and embarrassed at the thought that some people could see him in his current state, with only underwear on, Irec let go of his mindset and ran out of the pool. Frantically grabbing his clothes, and hurriedly dressing, swinging his backpack on, his face flushed. _What did they see? _He thought, frightened. Walking back to the pool, with all his clothes on, he sat down, and made his sneakers touch the bottom of the pool. It was odd, seeing your clothes go into water and not get wet. Looking through the surface - again - Irec looked through what he saw already, and abruptly realized that his face muscles were perfectly set to summon a train. 

_So if that is how Gates can be manipulatedsimply by summoning a TRAIN?! But the only places where I've felt Gates in subway stations are nowhere near the tracks! _Irec's thoughts drifted out onto the breeze, where he caught a faint melody, beckoning and calling.

_And you know I don't mean to hurt you_

And you know that it means so much

I am falling, I am fading

I am drowning, help me to breathe

I am hurting, I have lost it all, help me to breathe

Walking over to where the voice, crying out in pain, but still oddly calm about it, had come from, he saw a pool of mist. Shivering not from the breeze, which had suddenly grown in intensity, but from his past experience with the water, he opened his mind to the focus that he needed. And he saw information itself take on a presence, one that came out and bit you on your cheek, a presence so vile and evil yet so full of life. Studying it closer, he realized that it was actually composed of two parts, one of life, the other of hatred, but they were so intertwined it was hard to tell the difference. And through it all appeared an open arch, bubbling upward through the mist. It was violent, the colors of orange, black, green and blue fighting violently over possession. They moved and pulsated over and around the actual Gate, which was between two Ionic Greek columns. Carved out of something that appeared to be marble, but too hot and dust-free to be marble. From it all oozed a smell of different life, of partnership it was fresh and exciting, as the scent of freedom is on its first smelling. Hunching forward a little, and sighting a small girl with a forlorn figure, a braid resting on her left cheek, on the other side, he walked through, his backpack dragging him down as his focus continued to keep the arch in existence. 

__

So this is how a Gate works how can I explain this to myself? Irec mused while walking through the arch, which had lengthened itself into a vault. The vault's long, hot, dust-free interior held little to offer to the eye besides a constant reflection of oneself on all sides - the floor, walls, and curved ceiling. _I suppose the best way to describe what a Gate is a cluster of nothingness. We are mostly made up of empty space - after all, look at all that space between the nucleus and the electron, and that's still not the smallest level! A Gate forms when there is a large cluster of nothingness - and since Nature abhors a vacuum, any number of atoms can fill it. In particular, atoms from a different planet, a different area, and if the willpower is strong enough, a different universe. That is, a different universe that is also constructed of atoms. The most amazing thing about these Gates is that any living presence can manipulate them to some extent. Gates around plants, for example, are more carbon dioxide vents, so that they can grow better. Light coming through a Gate is formed by what's behind (or around) the atoms which you've 'manipulated' into being there in other words, we can cause the exact atoms to arrive at these vacuums, since Nature hates having a vacuum. That is not to say that Gates are a one-time thing they're reusable, and their appearance frequency appears to be directly related to the density of organisms in that area. A few do exist in remote areas, but those are random Gates. Either that, or they're meant to be used as areas that will be developed around, causing more organisms to live there, much like water did with the Ancient Civilizations now where exactly AM I going?_

Irec stopped, both mentally and physically. The end of the vault was definitely closer, but what lay beyond was still a mystery. All that appeared was darkness. Absolute pitch black. Deciding to jog a little, as the end was only about two city blocks away, Irec made his way to the end of the vault, his backpack joggling as the contents protested against the sudden increase in speed. He slowed down a little as the end of the vault approached him. The dim lighting came from the curved ceiling, a faint glow reminiscent of old, grimy, underground city lights. The light had a slightly amber tint to it, making the entire vault look old and worn. From the pressure in Irec's ears, he was able to figure out that he was underground, the walls adding a feeling of closure. Irec's sneakers made skidding noises on the floor as he slowly came down to a halt, about to step outside of the vault.

His foot went through thin air, causing Irec to tip forward, to fall in absolute pitch blackness. He tried to turn back, to grab hold on the edge - but he was too slow. A sudden dullness filled his mind as he fell, in an emotion that he was in something that he had no control over. If the emotion was actual motion, it would have been extremely hot and moving, the frightened step that is taken just as you step out of your comfort zone to try something new. Bringing his hands down to his sides, as his right hand still above his head, in a failed effort to hold onto something, he slowly got used to the feeling of descending. The little whistles given off by the air as it whirled past him gave no hint as to where and when the bottom of this pit might be found. Irec's hands grew cold and surprisingly dry, but Irec was unable to control individual finger movements. Unable to see even his own feet, with the weight of his backpack still dragging him down faster than ever, Irec looked dejectedly up towards the rapidly disappearing light that indicated the vault. In the recesses of his mind, Irec began to play a decidedly lonesome Philip Glass soundtrack, 'Closing'. 

As the piece went on in his mind, Irec cast his eyes down, and averted his gaze to what lay beneath him. The wind still blowing through his hair, and up his shorts, giving him a rarely felt tickling sensation on his inner thigh, thoughts of mist on an English moor came to him from the music. The stars, in their ever-beckoning dance set in the sky, swirled around him. The lone constellation that he could name, the Big Dipper, actually came down to bend itself around him, and the others proceeded to do so as well, but in a much more random fashion. 

Suddenly, in the rapidly falling world around Irec, a light was spotted. Turning the music in his head off, as well as the images of stars, Irec moved over to fall directly onto where the light was coming from. The light seemed to be neatly arranged in oblong, two dimensional, bars that seemed to ascend in the area that he was falling, at least from Irec's point of view. As he came closer, he saw that the bars were coming from the side of the chamber, and seemed to move towards the center. And then suddenly, he was on the bar, moving towards the center of the chamber. His backpack made an annoying _thump_ on the light, which actually had no texture at all, as did the pools of fire and spit earlier. Using the light to peer ahead, Irec noticed that the bars disappeared once they had reached the center of the room. Trembling, he noticed that his knees felt weak, even though he was lying down. 

He was in the center of the chamber, with the light still underneath him. Irec could hear the faint _swoosh_ of the air, which now held a slightly chlorine smell to it, like the swimming pool, as it pressed down on him. Irec was moving upwards. Squinting a little, to see if they had passed the vault that he had come in through, he could see a faint speck of light far below him. 

Irec pressed down on the bar of light that he was on, and was surprised to feel that this, too, was a Gate. But he was ON a Gate that another human had activated with a specific purpose, and it was reliability. Frowning, he pressed down again, as if the resistance he felt from the light would reveal more information. And abruptly, the light began to crumble underneath his touch, folding, running through his fingers, to feed something as sand crumbles through your fingers on a beach, as the wind whisks it away, so did the light become liquid, dispersing in an orderly fashion to create something larger. 

A faint cry of 'Gomamon sinkai.! Ikkakumon!' was heard, and Irec blinked, surrounded by a brightness as he realized that he was floating once more, close to the ceiling of the chamber, which consisted of a purple fog. Looking directly downwards, he realized that a pillar, a column of light, was rising from the bottom slightly off-center, penetrating the thick purple fog with a single image: the image of an elongated emergency/medical cross with right triangles in the four quadrants that it indicated. The image appeared to be grayish - white. 

A sudden burst of light came from the image, which had been spinning madly above the fog, and the light permeated through the fog. Swimming (of a sort, as Irec found that he could no longer walk in this space) over to the column, he examined the fog, and found that it was solid. Examining the edge where the light had gone through, he found that the fog was jagged. Swimming into the column of light, he was once more swept upwards, above the fog, and into a world of water. The symbol had disappeared, but the aura that had surrounded it was present in large amounts here -_the same aura_, Irec thought, bewilderment in his mind and heart, _that was on the bar of light. _But presently, he was far more concerned with what to do in a swirling pool of water with an extremely wet backpack. 

to be continued

Aip! This is my first fic on ff.net, to be careful ^_^. I do realize that I probably screwed up on the spelling for the japanese evolution and that Jyou's crest is really 'Sincerity' in japanese, not reliability. I'd have to say that the switch of names for the crests was one of the few good decisions made regarding storyline change - reliability makes more sense than sincerity, although I can see how Japan linked it. But anyways

How was it? Feedback (available on the form right on this page, hint hint) is greatly appreciated. This series is really a mini-series, where each story begins with the first three para (where you learn about Irec's ability). It's really all about character development and seeing the different reactions that the character and YOU, the READER have about it. Naja, I hope you enjoyed my lovely fic and it is NOT a ninth (tenth? 11th? 12th? 13th? 14th? 15th? I believe the count is up to 15 now [for a new one], including season 2 kids, Ken (who turns good), Wallace, and Michael) digidestined fic, as you have seen. Irec does NOT get his own digimon. 

Yes, I know , took some stuff out of Lain, but that is such a seriously cool anime as well, and it actually bears down a lot on digimon (in season 2, the ep where Kari is whisked away to help others, the scuba/divermon with dark spirals most of that is taken DIRECTLY out of Lain, the entire fuzzing out in class, etc.). And Kari really IS Lain anyways ^_^. Well, wait around long enough, and the rest will FOLLOW, no worry. Still lost as to where this will go? ^_~ email me (I think you can contact me, if not, go to http://clubs.yahoo.com/ and join the club 'digiotakulieu' (sp?), which is owned by Nythink and TaiTrinity715. I'm Nythink - join the club (if you have yahoo, if you don't, then JOIN, they have 6MB for email, 300% more than the bad 2 MB that hotmail gives you - and you get less spam and security attacks than they do, too! ^_^) 

Legal stuff: I do not own Saban, Bandai, Fox Kids, Toei-Entertainment and Animation, etc legal legal legal more legal. Ok, that's enough. Note: all works contained herein are purely fictional and have no resemblance to the real world. Any similarities are purely coincidental. 

--V36yraDh48yo Content-Disposition: form-data; name=".dnm"


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